


Under the Sun

by knox_moreau



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Artist!Jeremy, M/M, jerejean, under the sun, writer!Jean
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-11-07
Updated: 2017-01-25
Packaged: 2018-08-29 13:53:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 7,250
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8492284
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/knox_moreau/pseuds/knox_moreau
Summary: Jean Moreau is an exy player, not a writer. At least that's what he thinks. His newfound therapist, however, has other ideas. Seeing as Jean refuses to talk to her in his hour-long therapy sessions, Ms. Dawson suggests perhaps writing down whatever he's keeping inside. Jean can't possibly see how he's expected to write when he has nothing to write about. Then comes Jeremy Knox, in all his brightness and magnitude. Maybe, Jean thinks, he has something to write about.





	1. Chapter 1

“How’ve you been this week, Jean?” 

 

It felt weird to hear his name being used in passing. It’d always been “Moreau this” and “Moreau that.” “You useless piece of shit this and that.” Hearing his first name made him visibly flinch. 

 

“Ah,” Ms. Dawson breathed the word softly as if she was aware just how delicate Jean felt at this moment in time. At every moment in time, really.

 

“Would you like to tell me about it?” she avoided the use of his name, having aptly guessed what had made him spasm so suddenly from her previous question. Jean blinked through her, not here nor there. Jean was nowhere, currently lost inside his own head. 

 

“Okay. Would you like some tea? Coffee? Hot chocolate? Vodka?”

 

“What?” Jean finally spoke. A proud smile of achievement was on Ms. Dawson’s pink-coated lips. 

 

Ms. Evelyn Dawson was a nice lady appearing to be in her mid-30s with not much personality Jean could notice besides being nice. So far, the only interesting thing in Jean’s previous session or this session with her is the fact she offered him vodka amongst other more socially acceptable drinks in such a setting. 

 

“I just wanted to know if you could speak,” she said in her normal-voice. Jean was starting to realize she had two different tones to her voice. One was for normal things such as offering drinks or being a smart ass. The other was for being a stereotypical therapist, which Jean was also coming to realize that she didn’t use as often as he had thought she would.

 

But that didn’t mean Jean appreciated her trick into getting him to talk. Jean fought the impulse to snap a rude comment at her, but reminded himself instead that the pettier route would be to not say anything at all. Or for the rest of this session.

 

Half an hour in, Ms.Dawson finally gave up. Well, she gave up as far as asking Jean questions in hopes he might decide to give her an answer for once. When there was about five minutes left, she took the last sip of her tea in her white ceramic mug, wiped the corners of her mouth with the pad of her thumb, and blinked at Jean. It was a different kind of blink than the ones Jean had given her though, less hollow, more thoughtful.

 

“If you’re not going to speak to me, maybe you could try to write down whatever you’re keeping inside. I’m not going to make it an assignment or anything. It’s simply a suggestion.” A beat of silence. “I’ll let you leave a minute or two early.” That was all Jean needed to be told.

 

Today was supposed to be a busy day for Jean, which he was not looking forward to. Jean was exhausted by simply waking up in the morning, but to go to a therapy session to waste his time first then to be expected to meet his new teammates? Jean was beyond interacting with people anymore. He had himself, and that’s all he had at the end of the day.

 

Jean had transferred schools to the University of South California. It wasn’t exactly a decision he’d made, so much as a necessary action. If he’d stayed at the Nest any longer, he might’ve died, which Jean was slowly considering to not be such a bad option.

 

The taxi Jean had taken to the campus of USC arrived all too soon for Jean, who’d been mentally preparing himself for nothing more than emotional death and nothing less than exhaustion. On numb legs, he stepped out of the car, onto the pavement, and into something he wasn’t exactly sure he was ready for.

 

His legs were less numb by the time he reached the door of the informational building, but it seemed the numbness had bled its way into Jean’s brain. He wasn’t exactly thinking or present in his own body for that matter, but he was present enough to function at the lowest level of functioning possible. Jean was always at that level, it seemed.

 

“Sir?”

 

“I’m sorry, what?” Jean blinked away the numbness, grounding himself in the words being spoken to him. 

 

“I said, the dormitory building for the sports players was right here.” She had one long, polished red fingernail pressed to a spot on the map set on the desk separating them.

 

“Oh. Thank you.”

 

The instant Jean was out of the building, he headed for a bench. He practically fell upon it, covering his grey eyes with the palm of his hand to shield them from the sun, from the world, from his problems. 

 

Ground yourself, Jean reminded himself. Did you learn anything from those two sessions with Evelyn?

 

One: think of one thing you can see. I can see the lines of my palms, the scars cut into them, the misshapen form of the fingers. Two: think of two things you can hear. I can hear birds chirping and singing entirely too happy songs,. I can hear the droning sound of insects buzzing. Three: think of three things you can taste. I can taste the memory of blood in my mouth. I can taste the warm air between my palm and my lips. I can taste the skin in my mouth as I bit down on my palm to muffle the screams filling the Nest. 

 

Jean stopped after three. It was a depressing tactic for him, but it at least worked. It reminded him he was mortal, that to be mortal he must first be alive, that to be alive he must have a heartbeat, that to have a heartbeat he must have a heart at all.

 

When he was ready to continue on with his life, he removed his hand from his eyes. He blinked a few times to adjust to the light of the day and of the realization that he was in fact alive. He stood, looked at his map, and walked on. 

 

He made it in front of dorm room 93 after quite a while of mindless walking and a few moments of sensible direction. Now, he raised his fist, curled into the same shape he’d formed so many times but never dared throw at anyone. He simply knocked three simple times before lowering his hand still clenched in a fist to his side. Footsteps thudded from inside the dorm room. 

 

“Hello?” The door opened to show a young guy, several inches shorter than Jean with an almost shade of brown hair that was messed up in the sense that suggested he’d been laying in bed. 

 

“Hello,” Jean finally found his words. His voice came out gravelly and deep with his accent thick around the words. Jeremy was smiling at him as if he was the best thing he’d ever seen in the world.

 

“You must be Jean.” A hand was thrust out at him a little too quickly for Jean’s liking, making him flinch for the second time that day. The smile on the boy’s face faltered at the realization before retracting his hand sheepishly. “I’m Jeremy Knox.”

“I know who you are,” Jean’s words came out surprisingly cold, even to himself. He found himself distrustful and already having anxiety about how’d he’d be able to sleep with another person that he barely knew in the room. Well, how he was going to sleep period. 

 

“Oh. Well, come in.” Jean complied, following Jeremy into the dorm room. 

 

Jean did not in fact, sleep well, or at all, that night.


	2. Chapter 2

The early hours of the morning finally arrived, feeble gray light streaming in through the open curtains of the one window in the room. It illuminated the decor of the room with a sad, but comforting feeling to it. Jean had never seen such a light until he left the Nest. He never saw the early hours of the morning from a comfortable bed. And he’d never seen a room quite like room 93. 

 

The setup of furniture was typical for a college dorm room: pitifully small couch pushed against the wall, a desk on another wall, and a night table between the beds. What got Jean though is what Jeremy had filled the room with. There were smears of color everywhere. On the desk, the couch, the nightstand. On an artist’s smock hanging over a chair. On a palette, on a canvas, on paintbrushes. Jeremy, Jean realized, was an artist. 

 

Canvas paintings of varying subjects hung on the wall. Some were positive sayings in beautiful calligraphy. Some were painted flowers that looked so lifelike that the only reason Jean knew it was a painting was the canvas part. Some were pastel blended sunsets. Some were portraits. Some were landscapes. There was a watercolor paper sketchbook with drawings and paintings on every page as far as Jean could tell from where he sat up in the bed. Mugs were everywhere as well. Some held abandoned tea, while others held equally as abandoned and cold coffee. Some held paint water with brushes sticking out of them. The room was nearly enough to distract Jean from his exhaustion. 

 

Nearly. 

 

Jean lay awake for another hour or so before he heard Jeremy turning in the bed beside him. Jean let his cheek fall to the pillow so he could catch a glimpse of the person who could create things so beautiful. 

 

“Good morning, Jean!” It really was an exclamation. Never had Jean heard anyone so chipper, at this time of the morning, or ever. 

 

Jean didn’t say anything. 

 

Jeremy went about the room, seemingly unperturbed that Jean was watching his every move carefully. It was a habit Jean had to ensure that he’d know when he was about to be attacked. And it confused him, how Jeremy’s posture and body language showed no signs or bitterness or anger towards him. Jeremy was simply dragging a chair over to a cabinet he could barely reach to grope around until he found a very specific mug he desired. Jean slowly made himself get out of bed, pad softly across the cold floor and over to Jeremy, who shot him a quizzical glance. 

 

Jean reached an arm up, grasped the mug he thought Jeremy was going for and slowly lowered it back down to Jeremy’s height. Jeremy seemed delighted to have figured out that Jean was doing something nice for him. In reality, Jean was always expected to grab out of reach things for Riko for him since he was so much taller than just about anyone else on the team.  
“Thank you, Jean.” Jean froze. He’d never grown accustomed to hearing those words. Not from his parents when he was little, certainly not from the Ravens as he grew up. 

 

“What’s the matter?” Jeremy’s brow was furrowed, and he wore a mask of unease. He’d expected Jean to be at least a little dysfunctional, but he hadn’t expected this. Jean hadn’t expected it either.

 

“Nothing. Nothing,” Jean echoes the words on his tongue. Those were the words that were always expected to come out of his mouth. 

 

Nothing was ever the matter, or at least out loud it wasn’t, when you lived with the Ravens. 

 

“Have you already met the other Trojans?” Jeremy’s soft voice broke through the silence in the room. Everything about Jeremy was soft from the sweater he had put on to the hems of his sweatpants that were a little too long for his legs. From the slight curl of his hair to the tortoiseshell print of his round glasses. From the smudges of paint covering his hands that he’d forgotten to wash off to the dimples in his cheeks when he smiled. Jean didn’t understand how someone so soft could play such a hard, contact-based sport. 

 

Or how he had picked up on so much about Jeremy in only one night. 

 

Jean shook his head in place of a verbal reply. He was still watching Jeremy’s every move, analyzing for threat, but the only threat he found was that Jeremy might fall off his chair trying to reach the coffee beans. Jean moved forward slowly, catching the corner of Jeremy’s eye before turning his attention to grabbing the coffee beans. He handed them to Jeremy, grunting in response to Jeremy’s ‘thank you.’

 

“You’re not very talkative, are you?” Jeremy asked, soft dimples appearing on round cheeks. Jean leveled a stare at him. 

 

“Well, we’ll give that a while.”

 

That night, Jean laid awake on the hard mattress that had yet to be broken in. It had yet to become comfortable, just like Jean. Jean considered the words his therapist had told him. ‘Maybe you could write down whatever you’re keeping inside.’ Jean reached for a pen along with a piece of paper on the bedside table that Jeremy and he shared. Jean noted that it was a calligraphy pen, but it was the only pen within reaching distance, and Jean wasn’t about to get up just to get a stupid pen. 

 

August 8th

 

Paint  
There is a boy  
Made of paint.  
He has smears of blue eyes  
With a watery pink smile.  
His skin is sun dried  
And beauty rushes from his fingertips.  
He’s made of soft lines  
And smudged shadows.  
Shaded colors  
And handcrafted lips.  
~J.M.

 

And maybe, Jean fell asleep a little easier than normal.


	3. Chapter 3

Jean was not used to breakfast with the Trojans. He, really, wasn’t used to breakfast with anyone at all. The Ravens weren’t exactly company at any time of day, much less their earlier than normal mornings. Nor had Jean ever seen so much junk food at one time. How did they consume it all? Did they just...eat it? Jean supposed that’s what they normally did with food. There were a few reasonable options set out on the table, probably for him, he suspected. Foods like bananas, apples, oranges, various fruits, etcetera, etcetera. They also weren’t aware, Jean suspected again, of just how sick he felt staring at all the food. Jean hadn’t eaten properly in several weeks. He’d eaten of course, but only when the kind people of this earth (e.g. Renee Walker) made him. 

 

Jean politely sat down, wary of the stares, curiosity, and curious stares he was on the receiving end of. He was also wary that he barely ever did anything politely, rather than meekly. He was not a force to be reckoned with, but then again, he currently wasn’t much of a force at all.

 

He hadn’t always been this way. 

 

“You can get something to eat, you know,” Jeremy’s gentle voice told him. At least, he thought it was Jeremy. There was so much commotion, and the noise level was so high that Jean wasn’t particularly positive of what he was hearing from anyone. Jean felt himself spiraling down in all the noise, all the chaos. The room was at once obnoxiously loud and eerily quiet. Jean couldn’t feel his hands. He didn’t know where they were. All he saw was the wooden table his gaze bore down on, empty and freezing. 

 

A hand touched his shoulder. 

 

Jean shot up. 

 

His hands were by his sides, his gaze had shifted to the innocent yet surprised stare of Jeremy. He knew where he was again. He was in his own body, in this chaotic noise. Just noise. And he had to get out. He heard the chair behind him fall backwards rather than saw the collision, and he wasn’t interested in staying around to upright it again. He stumbled out of the room, suddenly aware that the room had, in fact, shifted to eerily quiet.

 

Once outside the building, Jean slid his back against the brick of the building, shirt rising up and coarse brick scraping the skin covering his back. He wound up on the grass, knees to chest and hands covering his face. He began to realize his entire body shaking from the adrenaline pumping through him. He needed to calm down. 

 

One-

 

“Jean!” 

 

Jean flinched in response. 

 

“Jean, are you okay?” 

 

And just like that, Jean’s anxiety converted itself into rage. 

 

“Do I look okay to you?” he snaps, French accent smothering his voice. Jeremy seemed taken aback, and Jean almost regretted snapping at him. Almost. 

 

“I’m sorry.” Jeremy pointed his finger to the spot in the grass beside Jean. “Can I sit?” Jean considered his question before nodding his head feebly in a near defeated manner. Jeremy sat with a considerable number of inches apart from Jean, either out of courtesy or fear, neither of which Jean wanted from him. Jean didn’t want anything from him besides to be left alone. 

 

He hadn’t always been this way.

 

“Do you want to talk about it?” Jesus fuck, was Jeremy going to become another therapist to him? Jean barely even liked his current therapist, and he wasn’t sure he liked his teammates at all. 

 

“No. The only thing I want,” Jean paused for dramatic effect and to amplify how angry he was, “is for you to leave me the fuck alone.” Jeremy seemed to visibly shrink into himself. His eyes were an almost shade of gray that was a little too blue to be considered gray, his hair was an almost shade of brown, and his entire being was almost. Just almost. Jean understood the feeling of being almost something, but almost nothing. Stuck in existential limbo. Suddenly, Jean felt a rush of regret, nothing about it an almost.

 

“I-I’m sorry.” Those words were not usually in Jean’s public vocabulary. Jean had two types of vocabularies: the words he was allowed to say in public and the words he reserved for the painful nights he said something he wasn’t allowed to say in public. Jeremy seemed to notice the regret bleeding out through Jean’s eyes, and even the pain that was hidden as far back as Jean could push it. 

 

“It’s okay, Jean. It’s okay,” Jeremy repeated himself. Jean hadn’t heard those words in so long, maybe ever. Nothing was ever okay.

 

He hadn’t always been this way.

 

“It’s okay.” Jean shook his head and rooted his face into the palms of his hands. “It’s okay,” Jeremy kept saying. 

 

Jean hadn’t realized he’d been crying, either. He wasn’t sure how long he’d been crying, but the palms of his hands were slick with salty tears. He wasn’t sure how long they were out there, or if Jeremy had stayed the whole time, or if anyone had come to check on the two of them. But when he finally removed his head from his hands, Jeremy was still there, patiently waiting but not touching him. Jean wasn’t sure what he felt about Jeremy right then.

 

“Come on, you need to try to eat. Let’s bring something back to the dorms,” Jeremy suggested but waited for Jean’s agreement before moving. As he stood up, Jean took a moment to observe Jeremy again. He was smaller than Jean, a lot smaller. He had his glasses on, almost round and tortoiseshell print, along with a gray sweater with sleeves a little too long for his thin arms. He looked old in this moment in time, but his mannerisms were young. He was a tree with many rings that could still sway in the wind and dance with its leaves for years to come. 

 

Jean, on the other hand, felt rather like a potted plant: something that sat there, drained you of resources such as your water, and was all around quite inconvenient. 

 

He hadn’t always been this way.

 

Jean and Jeremy sat on the floor in their dormitory, Jeremy sipping a mug of either coffee, tea, or hopefully not paint water, while Jean pretended he was a potted plant. Except, it was hard to be a potted plant when someone kept talking to you. Since it was Jeremy, the person who’d decided to stick around while Jean was calming down from a panic attack, Jean felt at least a little obligated to give responses past the occasional nod and hum. 

 

“Where are you from originally?” Jean leveled him with a stare. “Oh. Right,” Jeremy giggled. Jean had never really heard anyone giggle before, at least not like Jeremy. It was a bubbly, relaxing sound, which surprised Jean since there weren’t many things that did relax Jean nowadays. Jean glared down at his toast before taking a considering bite. Jeremy watched him steadily.

 

“Do you mind if I paint while we talk?”

 

Jean nodded. There wasn’t exactly much to be talked about, except the incident that had occurred, which did not happen to be on the list of things Jean would prefer to talk about. He instead settled for watching Jeremy again. Jeremy had replaced the sweater for a mostly white t-shirt that had droplets, splatters, and smears of color all across it. He set his mug down beside one labeled “paint water” that contained several paintbrushes of varying sizes. 

 

It was nearly entrancing to watch Jeremy work. He could blend beauty and opinions into one like he blended paints. He could convey even the subtlest message through a certain color. He could set the mood of the room with a stroke of his brush here and there. After an amount of time Jean was uncertain exactly how long, Jean uprooted his spot on the floor and swapped it for the spot on the much more comfortable bed. He found himself reaching for his paper from the night before. Picking up the pen, he began to write a second entry.

 

August 9th  
V.

 

I wasn’t always this way.  
I wasn’t always tears and pain.  
I wasn’t always smudges of rain  
That continued for days.

 

I can remember once  
A day in France after brunch.  
We ran along the sand  
Trailing wind behind our outstretched hands.

 

I think I was five  
On this day I felt alive.  
I don’t have many of these days.  
I wasn’t always this way.

 

They stayed like that for a while, a duo of creators, one visual and one written. One colors and one words. One paintbrushes and one ink. Jeremy was the first to stand and stretch his back. He held one hand to his lower back and bent over backwards as best he could, which was admittedly pretty far. He rolled his wrist a few times before rubbing his hands together, which only further smudged the shades of blue paint covering his hands and forearms. 

 

“Come on, Jean, we’ve got practice soon,” he explained his reason for abandoning his work. Jean set his supplies aside and began to follow after Jeremy. He stopped in the doorway to look back, something he wasn’t accustomed to doing. He noted Jeremy’s painting was in shades of blue, a portrait of a person writing. Jean took a moment to realize it was of him. 

 

“Do you like it?” Jean hadn’t realized Jeremy was still waiting for him, but he couldn’t miss the note of nervousness in his tone. It nearly brought a smile to Jean’s face. Instead, Jean nodded, unsure of how to make a smile anymore, unsure of how to be happy or okay. Jeremy’s own smile was bright enough for the both of them, and Jean couldn’t deny the feeling behind his chest when he observed just how blinding the magnitude of Jeremy Knox could be.

 

He hadn’t always been this way.


	4. Chapter 4

Jean loved few things in life. He hated many things, such as people, life, and himself, all things he figured he should not hate. Yet he did. With Jean, things seemed black and white. It was hate or love, all or nothing. Sensory overload or no feelings at all. Jean usually felt the latter, which is to say, he did not feel. 

But the instant Jeremy lead the way into the Trojans court, Jean felt something. Jean wasn’t particularly sure what or why he felt as he dreamily walked to center court. He spun in a circle, eyes wide and full of innocent joy and wonder. He spun and he spun and he spun until he was sure he could name how many rows of seats there were in the stadium, pick out the exact shade of color the painted trojans helmet was, and tell you the exact width between each line and marking of the court floor. Jean loved the court.

Although he loved it, there were some unsettling things about the court. This was not the court at fault, rather than it was Jean at fault. Jean’s own dysfunction. It felt strange to see so much color in one place, and even stranger to see a golden trojans helmet painted upon the bricks of the wall instead of a tar-colored raven. Jean suddenly became aware of Jeremy’s presence and eyes watching him. When he turned to observe Jeremy in return, he noticed Jeremy was smiling. 

“Welcome to your new home away from home. How’re you liking it?” Jeremy’s cheery, overexcitable voice asked Jean. Jean couldn’t bring himself to describe exactly how much being on a court again made him feel. 

Instead, he gave a small grunt composed of a strange mix between approval and dislike. Jean always seemed to be speaking in grunts nowadays.

Jeremy’s smile faltered, a rockslide of emotion leaving. He quickly replaced his evident disappointment with more cheer. Jean couldn’t understand how Jeremy was always so happy, the human embodiment of a small puppy, but he wanted to know so he could be happy too.

Maybe one day he would be happy.

“C’mon, you’ve gotta actually meet the team. Make an effort to talk, yea?” Jean only nodded before following along behind Jeremy. 

“Jeremy! Jer Bear!” A small girl with brown hair shoved back by heart-shaped sunglasses on top of her head came bounding towards them, coffee cup abandoned behind her. 

“Laila Kayla!” Jeremy promptly responded, equally as excitable as this girl on her apparent sugar rush Jean guessed was from the coffee. The girl, Laila, bounded into Jeremy’s outstretched arms and wrapped her legs and arms around him in a similar fashion to that of a koala bear. 

Jean hadn’t noticed another, taller girl walk up beside him until he turned around to observe the rest of the room. He flinched in surprise. It seemed Jean did a lot of flinching nowadays.

“You must be Jean. I’m Sara, and the clingy girl over there is Laila as you might’ve guessed,” the girl standing too closely to Jean for his comfort explained. She was a muscular girl with long black hair tied back in some sort of braid Jean wasn’t sure of and tan skin. Her outfit suggested she had been working out as well as the sweat rolling off her slightly red face. Though her tone had been warm, her proximity set the hair at the back of his neck on end. 

“Is she Jeremy’s girlfriend?” Jean asked, subtly stepping away from Sara and looking over to the pair of short people. Well, everyone was short to Jean. He turned his cheek back over his shoulder in surprise when he heard a laugh. Jean wasn’t accustomed to hearing laughter, and it set him edge again. 

But Jean was always on edge. 

“No, she’s my girlfriend,” Alvarez was grinning at Jean widely as if he’d just told the funniest joke she’d ever heard. Jean blinked hollowly for a moment before it clicked in the gears of his brain.

“Oh.” Alvarez grinned wider.

“Yea, oh,” she laughed before walking over to her proclaimed girlfriend. Laila quickly detached herself from Jeremy and instead fell into Sara’s outreached arms as dramatically as she could possibly muster. 

Jeremy abandoned the two girls in favor of talking to Jean, which Jean didn’t quite understand since nobody ever talked to him. Except for Jeremy. 

“You’ve already met Sara and Laila, I see,” Jeremy grinned bright enough to rival the shades of yellow paint on the walls and floor. “Let me introduce you to the rest of the team.” 

Before Jean had any say in the matter, Jeremy lightly touched his arm, enough to make Jean go rigid, and motioned for him to follow. Jean stared for a moment at nothing in particular, attempting to slow his heartbeat. His heart was racing more from the anxiety of being touched rather than anything else at the moment because in Jean’s mind, touching equate to pain. Finally, Jean followed. 

“This is Yolanda.” Jeremy had walked over to another girl on the team, dressed in her own workout outfit. Her hair was long and dark, pieces slipping out of the ponytail and framing her tanned face. She gave Jean a friendly smile, and Jean was beginning to catch on to just how friendly the Trojans were.

“Jean,” he quietly answered, and he was also beginning to catch on to how quiet he was.

He was quiet, he was tortured, and he was dysfunctional. 

Jeremy introduced him to the rest of the friendly trojans, all of who greeted Jean eagerly. Despite how eager they were, Jean could see to the bottom of the emotions in their voice and found caution in some of them. Jean recognized the caution in their voice after hearing it from his own for so long. 

There was Andy, neither a boy nor a girl, and their boyfriend Esteban. Oscar greeted Jean with a chin tilted nod and snapping his gum at him a little unpleasantly before continuing to talk to Gray who was only half listening, an earphone in one ear. Jean met the Pierce twin girls, Reagan and Logan, who were throwing a weight ball back and forth. They grinned at him and introduced each other with the opposite names. Jeremy rolled his eyes and corrected them, pointing to who was who. 

By the end of the introductions, Jean was exhausted. He never interacted with so many people, much less people being kind to him. Jean was even more exhausted by the end of practice, his small pool of social interaction diminishing quickly. The strength of his limbs were the only thing keeping him from collapsing right then.

“Alright, great practice, guys! Let’s go shower,” Jeremy nodded to all of them collectively, giving high fives and claps on the back to the team. Jean lingered behind the rest of the Trojans, unsure of if he should go shower with all of them in there.

“The showers have stalls,” Jeremy reassured him with a soft but watery smile before heading into the locker room behind the other Trojans. Jean finally found himself moving after them and entered a good while after most of them were out. He grabbed a towel and hesitantly went into a stall. He stripped his clothes covered in sweat and threw them over the stall door. 

He stood under the water, letting it scorch his skin and relax his tired muscles. He didn’t want to look down at himself, remind himself of every cut, burn, stitch he’s had on his body. He pressed his forehead to the tile of the wall and closed his eyes. Flashes of tortured showers at the nest rolled behind his eyelids like a horror movie. Jean clenched his fists and squeezed his eyes shut as hard as he could, focusing on anything besides the past. 

“Jean?” Jean flinched at the sound of his name from outside the shower stall. He opened his eyes and rubbed a hand on his forehead from where it had been pressed to the cold wall. The water had begun to run cold, and Jean reached for the knob to turn it off.

“Are you okay, Jean?” It was a stupid question to ask Jean. Was he okay? No. Was he ever okay? Also, no. 

But instead of voicing these thoughts, his words came out as a quiet, “yea.”

He dried off and tugged on the same sweaty outfit he’d had on before opening the stall door. Jeremy Knox was frowning at him with worry, the pair of them the last two in the locker room. 

“Are you sure?” Jeremy pressed. Jean felt the beginnings of irritation. Nobody asked if he was okay, and nobody should because it was obvious Jean was not.

“Why do you care?” Jean snapped, and Jeremy’s face fell even lower, changing from worry to sheer sadness and hurt.

Jean sighed and stalked out of the locker room only to find every one of the Trojans waiting for them. Most of them gave smiled, but a few handed Jean raised eyebrows and uneasy expressions. It seemed they could tell something was off. This only irritated Jean further.

“Where are you going, Jean?” Alvarez caught up to him, concern painted on her features. 

“Back to the dorms,” Jean rubbed his temples, obviously annoyed with the niceties of the Trojans. 

“You could ride with us,” Alvarez suggested. Jean shook his head in refusal before running out the door to go back to the dorms. 

Jean ran and ran and ran despite how tired his legs were, all over the campus until he was back to not feeling at all. Finally, he was back at the dorms. He walked into the dorm, and again, he was captivated by the feeling the room gave him. 

Jeremy was cross-legged on his bed, pillows piled behind his back and a sketchbook in his lap. His fingers were smeared with graphite, and he had his round, tortoiseshell glasses on. He glanced up at Jean when he came in but didn’t say anything. 

Jean figured there was nothing to say. 

Jean fell asleep that night to the sound of a pencil sketching late into the night, and somehow, it was the slightest bit comforting.


	5. Chapter 5

Jean was tired. He woke up exhausted, seemingly even more so than when he’d gone to sleep. But had he slept at all? Most of his night was comprised with nightmares, replayed images of undergone torture with splashes of more recent events. The recent events were dominated by Jeremy Knox. It was a strange thing for Jean to dream about, but he found himself back to the ordeal after breakfast. The ordeal where Jeremy told him it was okay, where someone cared about him. 

Then his thoughts shifted to the new faces he’d met, to all the smiles and caution, to all the “good jobs” and high fives. Everything about the Trojans unsettled Jean, and he wasn’t quite sure how long he could keep this up. Jean wasn’t quite sure what exactly ‘this’ was that he was keeping up either, but he felt like it wasn’t him. It was his brain, which Jean found seemed to be a separate entity than Jean himself. 

Jean’s brain was not a wonderful place to say the least. 

When he finally found the courage to open his eyes, he stared up at the ceiling instead. It felt to Jean as if nothing was real with your eyes closed. If you didn’t see it, it couldn’t have happened. If you just kept your eyes shut forever, you’d be okay. And when he finally found the courage to look at something other than the ceiling, he pushed himself to sitting with his exhausted arms. 

Jean had a therapy appointment today, he realized. Jean was not looking forward to it either, he realized. But maybe it could be better than laying in bed with his eyes closed, he realized.

“How’s the past while treated you, Jean?” Ms. Dawson asked him in her therapist voice. It seemed to Jean that no matter what therapist you went to, they all had a catchphrase of sorts to start the conversation. In this case, there was no conversation.

Jean quietly blinked at her. 

“What’s that paper you have?” she tried to ask another question. This time, Jean quietly blinked at her and handed the paper over. 

She seemed a little surprised when she read it, squinting a few times from Jean’s shaky handwriting. When she was done, her face morphed from surprised into impressed. 

“Did you write this?” she asked with a kind smile. Jean couldn’t understand how people could smile so freely and so kindly. 

Jean quietly blinked at her and nodded. 

“So you took me up on the suggestion of writing,” she nodded as if she wasn’t quite sure what to make of it, but she was still accepting it. “You’re very good at it.” This earned a grunt from Jean. 

“I know you can talk, Jean, but I also know I can’t force you,” Ms. Dawson explained, back in her therapist voice. “If you don’t want to talk about personal things, we can talk about impersonal things. How’s the weather?”

“Fuck the weather,” Jean snapped, grumpy from exhaustion and fed up with hearing her be a therapist. 

“That’s a start,” she nodded in approval. “Why do you say screw the weather?”

“Because I don’t care about the weather,” he turned away and stared out the glass window taking up most of one wall. There was a view of the city, of the people below him, and Jean found himself with the thought of what it’d be like to jump. 

“Why don’t you care about the weather?” Ms. Dawson continued like a curious child wanting to know about answers their parents couldn’t give. 

“Because I don’t have to,” Jean stopped himself with those words. He’d given away too much, said too much. He hadn’t meant to have let someone this close to him. He felt vulnerable, even behind his numerous other protections against people. 

“So being Jean Moreau includes not caring if you don’t have to. When have you ever had to?” she probes him. Jean felt irritated his words had made him that easy to see through. 

“Never, meaning I don’t particularly care to continue this conversation or session,” Jean stood from his chair now and headed for the door. 

“Jean,” Ms. Dawson didn’t rise from her chair, but calmly called his name. “I’m proud of you.” 

Jean went rigid for a second before opening the door and exiting the building.

Once he’d left the building, he rummaged through his dirty sweatpants pocket for money to pay for a cab. He gave up his search when he realized he’d only gotten enough money for a cab ride to the building. HIs fingers idly searched through his pockets still, just to have something to do, and they latched onto his phone. He pulled it out and glared down at the screen. He turned it on, hovering his finger over the contacts.

He couldn’t do this. He could just walk home. But the dark depths of Jean’s brain was pointing to a tall building and saying, “Hey, look, that’d be so easy.”

Jean pressed contacts. 

“Hello?” Jeremy’s voice was distorted with sleepiness and the crackle of being through a phone. Jean felt something that had been clenched in his chest begin to unwind.   
“Jeremy. I need you to come pick me up,” Jean demanded rather than asked. He braced himself for the interrogation of why he’d left, where he was, was he okay. All Jean heard from the other end was shuffling around a room and keys being grabbed. 

“Jean?” Jeremy’s voice finally came back to Jean. “Where are you? I’m heading to my car right now.” The feeling behind Jean’s chest was deflating, as if Jean had been holding his breath for too long, and now, he was exhaling. 

“I’m outside my therapist’s building,” Jean explained and looked over his shoulder for an address. When he found one, he reported it to Jeremy before hanging up. 

Jeremy pulled up ten minutes later on the dot. His truck was old and beaten up, paint peeling in some places which Jean found ironic. There was a dent in the back corner of it and the door was a little rickety when he opened it. It wasn’t anything Jean was accustomed to, but Jean was rarely accustomed to anything. At the very least, it had some charm.

“Do you want to talk about how the session went?” Jeremy asked, fidgeting with his hands on the steering wheel. Jean stared out the window before closing his eyes.

“No,” he answered when he reopened them, knowing Jeremy had been waiting on an answer. 

Closing your eyes blocked out the world, but it did not make the world go away. It did not make people like Jean invincible; the universe was not that kind.

He saw Jeremy nod in the corner of his peripheral vision, and nothing was said the rest of the car ride. 

Jean opted out of team breakfast today, instead glaring at more toast. It was dry and burned, but Jean figured it fit his desert of a mood. Jeremy had also opted out of team breakfast in favor of sitting with Jean while he glared at his toast. 

Jeremy had begun work again on the painting of Jean, the outline already complete as well as the base colors. Jean found it fascinating to watch the process of something beautiful being created. 

Jean paused. He had never thought of himself as something beautiful before. 

“Do you mind if I talk? You don’t have to talk back, I just feel better talking,” Jeremy continued on before Jean could answer his earlier question. “I talk to myself when I’m alone sometimes.” Jean glanced at Jeremy to find he was smiling, a soft smile that echoed the soft gray light of the morning. Jean got the impression this was not the usual side of Jeremy he presented; it was Jeremy with the volume turned down. 

“When I was little, I loved to paint. I loved drawing and painting anything really. At first, I painted simple things like flowers. Of course, they were all pretty shitty considering they were from when I was five,” Jeremy paused there to laugh at his own words. “But I got older, and in high school, I went to an art institute. It was a nice place and all, but I realized I was mediocre.

“I was that gifted kid who grew up with a constant flood of compliments only to reach high school and find out they were average at best. It was a particularly bad time for me, high school. I can’t imagine what you’ve gone through, but,” Jeremy paused, “I guess what I’m getting at is that I’ve been sad too. And not just a little sad. I mean, a depressive disorder. I was put on meds, and I’ve been on them for years.”

Jeremy looked up from his art to survey Jean’s reaction to all of this. Jean was still glaring at his toast but with seemingly more emotion than before. 

“The moral of my story, I guess, is that I’ve been sad. I’ve been broken. And I found something that helps. I saw you writing the other day, and I hope that will become something that helps you,” Jeremy finally finished.

The tight feeling behind Jean’s chest had grown even looser. There were a million things Jean wanted to say. He wanted to be enraged that Jeremy even thought he could come close to understanding Jean. He wanted to tell Jeremy he was not mediocre, he was not average. He wanted to be moved by Jeremy’s words, by his caring. He wanted to comfort Jeremy, knowing how it felt to be broken. But the scariest thing of all, was that he wanted to let Jeremy in. He wanted to let down his walls and become vulnerable. 

Instead of saying any of this, Jean quietly blinked at Jeremy and said, “Thanks.”


End file.
